


Ends and Means

by SaltyWaffles



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, war reflection tragedy morality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-16
Updated: 2012-09-16
Packaged: 2017-11-14 09:19:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/513694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltyWaffles/pseuds/SaltyWaffles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a field of hundreds of dead Iwa shinobi, Minato reflects on how a person can live happily while slaying more than he can count in the blink of an eye. Oneshot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ends and Means

Monster. Murderer.

That was what his enemies called him.

Hero.

That was what his allies called him.

Was it really possible to be both at the same time? Did killing in defense (or service, he had to remind himself) of his country and village make him a hero, or did it make him a murderer on payroll?

Those questions were the kind that every shinobi asked themselves. After all, killing was part of the job, and war was far from an exception.

How many had done _this_ , though?

He was surrounded by hundreds of corpses. The smell of blood was all too familiar—but he may as well have bathed in it. Slicing the throat was the quickest and most fluid of lethal strikes with a small knife…and quick and fluid were his style, and by extension, his life.

Killing hundreds in the span of a few seconds was something few people could claim to have done. Many of them had probably enjoyed it. The difference between him and them, he constantly reminded himself, was that he would rather not have had to do it in the first place.

But it was necessary, he told himself. Iwa was the invader; they had started a war with a nation that preferred peace. They were ruthless, even when given the luxury of alternatives.

He was not a monster. Because it was necessary. Because it was an act of defense. Because he would never take pleasure from the fame or congratulations bestowed upon him for this act. It needed to be done, it was ordered to be done, and he had done it.

He could live with that. He could live with the blood of hundreds—thousands, given how the war was going—on his hands, if it meant the defense of his country and the survival of his brothers and sisters in arms.

He would live with the _hatred_ and the _praise_ and the _guilt >, because it was necessary. It had to be done._

So that fewer children would fight a war in which they were unlikely to survive. So that peace—however temporary or flawed—would return as swiftly as possible. The fastest way to end a war with an enemy who wanted to destroy you was to threaten their destruction in return.

So he would destroy, and destroy utterly. He would fight without mercy, without remorse. To end this hellish war sooner rather than later. Was that not a mercy in and of itself?

But as he looked upon the carnage he had imposed on the battlefield in little more than a flash, he almost laughed at the idea. This was no mercy to the fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters that had died this minute, by his hand. This was mercy only in the most abstract of senses, but that did not make it any less important. The big picture mattered just as much as the smaller one. For the ends and the means share a complicated relationship, he knew. The end is greatly affected by what means are used to achieve it.

This was slaughter of soldiers—the means. And a faster road to peace—the ends.

There was no room for empathy. Down that path lead overwhelming guilt, uncertainty towards everything, and crippling regret. There is only so much the human mind can take. But he was a soldier, and soldiers did not betray their nation by hesitating to defend it.

He knew this was the most efficient solution. The path with the least loss of life. The lesser of many evils. It was necessary, he knew. He _had_ to believe it was necessary.

Because if it wasn't, Minato Namikaze half-heartedly thought, there was nothing.

A/N: This is right after Minato slaughtered the invading Iwa force during Kakashi Gaiden, if you didn't figure it out already.


End file.
